Thursday, December 31, 2009

My new skaven list has changed a bit, particularly after a disastrous game against dragon-led khorne mortals in which I managed to do everything I told myself not to do, including engaging with the vermin lord by himself and slamming the abomination into the frenzied dragon. Neither of those combats were pretty, with the a-bomb being 1-shoted and Vermy barely escaping the red knights with his life.

Here's where I'm at now. The biggest changes from the list against khorne is the inclusion of a BSB, who was sorely missed, and a 10th power die (the engineer was level 1 before). These came at the cost of 2 rat swarms, 3 gutters and the spikes off the HPA, all of which won't be missed too much.

Thoughts so far? The WLC is very hard to hit with, jezzails losing skirmishing is pretty huge, rolling to hit with ratling guns sucks (and both of mine misfired more often than got to shoot), the abomination is not auto-win, and the vermin lord takes as much finesse as I thought he would.

I've got a game against brets tomorrow, where we're both running 10 pd of magic for the first time in our warhammer careers. I expect mass miscasting ... but read all about it next year!

In the meantime, here's the BSB I smashed up last night:He's got a marauder horsemen shield that goes on the arm holding the standard, but it'll be painted separately. Scheme will be mostly bleached bone armor, so I added that tatty loincloth for some kind of green on the model.

Essentially I crushed him to pulp, gaining a staggering KP total and giving very little away. His dude messing with my reserves was irritating, but otherwise I was able to hold my points well and just smash away. We actually ended turn 4 on time, but since other people kept playing we could have continued, which would only have given me more of a KP lead over the other players. This was the only IG player at the event - and again, no one knew it was all KP all the time - and there was some bitterness at my early KP boost.

A great and incredibly bloody game, where his plague marines proved their resilience in spades. My 1k Sons also showed what a 3/4+ save with fearless can do, as the tizz boys + deathscreamer locked down 2 plague squads round after round, deathscreamer reaping away. I didn't play as well as I could, throwing my dread plasma cannon away early and not popping a single rhino despite those being far and away the easiest KP available. He eventually beat me by a couple KP, but I didn't do so bad considering I went for the hardest targets possible.

Ironically I had actually designed this list for the guy, out of the models he had available ... Despite being very very afraid of the double vindis, I was able to start stunning or destroying them fairly early on, letting my rhino squads perform a heavy flank of his force, with deep strike troops adding their weight in timely fashion. My dreads deserve commendation for this game, as they were able to lock down units that literally couldn't hurt them - possessed + sorcerer, demons - and grind them apart. Another fun game that turned my way once the wall of steel was cracked. The berzerkers proved to be a real thorn, costing about 14 CSM to put them down.

+9 KP

All told I earned 31 KP, which handily nabbed first place and $90 in gift certs (!!). I was well chuffed, though a comment on the IG player and my 4 turn brutalizing of him. It's not like the dude quite or changed his army or something after me - 2 other players got to go up against him (including the CSM I played final round), and nobody walked all over him like I was able to. So there.

Special commendation goes out to the deathscreamer - 1 jam all 3 games?! - and the dreads, who tenaciously held up through all games, often needing to be completely disassembled before giving up a KP, and were able to get some real stomping in due to judicious use of reserves. Very happy to see my weird toys work for me.

FANTASY

Rather than start more blogs I won't keep up to cover my fantasy exploits, expect to see some squarebase content cropping up here, as the new skaven book and a new escalation league at the FLGS have me really buzzing. Last week I finished the modeling for my skaven army redux, which mostly involved building some big bads:

VERMIN LORD

ABOMINATION

TRETCH CRAVENTAIL

Unfortunately the coming of winter means I won't get these primed and painted until probably Spring, barring I borrow somebody's basement to spray in ... But expect to hear of some exploits, I'll be painting to 1k once the semester ends, with just the big dudes waiting for the thaw.